In the course of performing their duties, public safety personnel may use cellular or converged wireless devices to communicate with one another. Such devices often provide half-duplex push-to-talk (PTT) communications, which may experience problems when a receiving device is in proximity to a transmitting device. For example, a microphone of the transmitting device may pick up sounds emitted by a speaker of the receiving device. This causes acoustic feedback, which can continue to circulate between the devices, growing into an unstable loop. This unstable loop is known as howling. When howling occurs, desired communications are often drowned out or otherwise obfuscated.
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The apparatus and method components have been represented where appropriate by conventional symbols in the drawings, showing only those specific details that are pertinent to understanding the embodiments of the present invention so as not to obscure the disclosure with details that will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of the description herein.